The Actions of Kings
by Blaze Moonlight
Summary: Peter's thoughts on his argument with Caspian after they return from the raid on Miraz's castle and what it shows about Caspian. Movie-verse, non-slash.


The walk back into camp was torturous. Even with the small numbers that the Narnians started out with there was no denying how many have died – the sparse number of them returning was testament to that. Where they left a strong battalion, they returned as a thin chain of battered losers. The faces of those who waited for them at the how and the silence saved Peter the job of explaining that they'd lost people, but it broke his sprit nearly as badly as losing them had.

"What happened?"

Lucy wasn't asking about the events, it was obvious that their soldiers are dead - that they were massacred by the Temarines. She was asking who was to blame for it disaster.

"Ask him."

"Peter…"

There was a reprimand in Susan's tone that Peter loathed. Like she thought that it was wrong for him to pressure Caspian into explaining himself – like she thought he shouldn't have to explain his mistakes.

"Me?"

His questioning tone frustrated Peter. How could he feign ignorance after all of that?

"You could have called it off – there was still time."

Time? _Time?_ Yes, there would have been time - if Caspian hadn't run off to warn his uncle! If Caspian thought he could get away with fobbing the blame off on Peter – Peter who had _tried_ to make the mission go right – after he'd completely messed up the entire mission then he had another thing coming. "No, there wasn't thanks to you. If you'd kept to the plan those soldiers might still be alive right now!"

His voice had cracked as he'd finished. How could Caspian not be feeling pain right now? Peter's heart was being crushed under the weight of the horror which they had seen, which they had to bare responsibility for, and all Caspian could think of was making sure that the blame was as far away from his as possible.

"And if you'd stayed here like I suggested they definitely would be!"

He had called them and he had agreed their plan and he had accepted everything they had given him, everything they _could_ give him, and now he was blaming them for the decisions that he had endorsed? "You called us – remember?"

"My first mistake."

"No. Your first mistake was ever thinking you could lead these people…"

There. He'd said it. Caspian was a failure. He might have railed the Narnians under him but he had lead them nowhere but to there deaths. His grand plan had been to call for help and then take all the credit. Peter walked away. This liar of a king made him sick.

"HEY!"

Peter turned to Caspian, wondering what else the _Telmarine_ boy, the pretender king, could possibly have to say.

"I am not the one who abandoned Narnia!"

_Abandoned?_ His anger surged. Like he had been given a choice in the matter! He'd been _ripped _away from Narnia only to return to find that his kingdom, _his home_, had been destroyed by the Telmarines – the very ancestors of the boy who was now trying to convict him of being the one who led the nation into its ruinous state.

"You invaded Narnia. You have no more right to be here than Miraz does! You, him, your father: Narnia's better off without the lot of you!"

He knew he'd touched a nerve when he'd brought up Caspian's father. He could tell by the way the boy had frozen in his tracks. The shove to the side for the reminder that Caspian was nothing more than an invader had been nothing.

It was on the final sentence that Caspian snapped – the truth clearly becoming too much for him. He gave a vicious –wild– cry and whirled on Peter – drawing his sword. Peter drew his in the same motion – blade flashing up to meet Caspian's.

They would have fought. He could feel it in his blood. The look on Caspian's face said the same.

"Stop it!"

The blades brushed together but there was no _'clang' _of a collision.

Caspian's head turned first but Peter's was only a split second behind.

Glenstorm was lowering Trumpkin to the ground with Edmund's aid – their Dear Little Friend clearly mortally wounded. Lucy rushed by Caspian and him even as they were still lowering their blades.

Caspian walked away. Even as Lucy was fumbling the cordial from her belt Caspian was just leaving. Leaving, unaware of the cordial as he was, Trumpkin to his death. Had Peter any shred of respect left for the boy, the brat, it slipped away in those moments. Caspian was not loyal to his people. To leave like that when one of soldiers, his comrades, was in such dire need to support – it was unforgivable. Trumpkin would be alright, Lucy's cordial (even now at over a thousand years old) was infallible, but Caspian didn't know that, had no way of knowing that, and still he left. That was not the action of a king.


End file.
